Prague - Czech President Vaclav Klaus Wednesday ratified a treaty establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC), a tribunal set up to punish war crimes and genocide, his office said. The Czech Republic was the last member of the 27-strong European Union to join The Hague-based court.
Aside from the Czech Republic, the court was so far backed by 109 countries, its website said. But the United Nations' Security Council heavyweights China, Russia and the United States have not joined.
The Atlanticist lawmakers for the centre-right Civic Democratic Party of former premier Mirek Topolanek had long resisted approving the charter, arguing that its ratification could damage the Czech-US relations.
While the Czech Republic signed the founding treaty in 1999, the bicameral parliament did not finish voting on it until nearly a decade later.
The upper house, the Senate, approved it in July 2008 and the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, in late October, two months before the country's EU presidency in the first half of 2009.
The president then took more than eight months to sign the document Wednesday. The charter was adopted in Rome in July 1998 and entered into force in 2002.
